


Dance Upon The Air

by PanBoleyn



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book: Fire and Blood, Dysfunctional Family, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-10-01 20:31:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17250926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: The day Aerea Targaryen tries to claim Balerion, a different dragon claims her. Instead of dying a horrible death at thirteen, Aerea lives to make her way in a world where once she might have been a future queen, but is now only a lesser princess.But a lesser princess with a dragon is no pretty doll to be moved about at will, not forever. And one change, as ever, leads to others.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So there's a lot of fates I don't like in F&B, mostly of women. But no one except me seemed to be furious over the unnecessary horror story of Aerea's death, so clearly, I was the one to fix it! :D

Aerea remembers King Maegor. Only a little; mostly he is a blur, a shadow overwritten by all the monstrous deeds she’s been taught he committed. He killed her father, or his soldiers did on his command, she knows this. He forced her mother to wed him, she knows this too. 

  
  


She also remembers that he called her his heir. Remembers the words said in that hard, deep voice. “Your Aerea will be my heir until a son is born to me, and she will be Queen regardless, for who better a bride for a prince than a princess, daughter of a girl who would fight even me?”

  
  


Of course, he hadn’t meant her, exactly. She hadn’t been Aerea yet, and only days after she and her twin had overheard that, the girl who was once Rhaella had been sent to Oldtown to be a septa. Only it hadn’t suited her, any more than being a princess suited the first Aerea. 

  
  


In later years, some will say it was one of the Queens who switched the children, that Rhaena or Alyssa thought it better that Jaehaerys’ placeholder heir be the fierce, bold twin, not the shy, frightened one. And mayhaps that is indeed why they got away with it, but in truth it was the girls themselves who did it. 

  
  


“I hate it here,” the little novice whispers to her sister. For the royal visit, the twins are allowed to share a bedchamber as once they shared a womb. “We should ask Mother if Uncle Jaehaerys will let me come back to court with you. It was the bad king who sent me here, can’t I come home now?” 

  
  


“I wish I could stay,” the little princess whispers back. “I don’t like court, there’s so many people and so much trouble, and Mother took me on her dragon and I was so afraid I would fall…” 

  
  


They whisper till they fall asleep, that night and the next, and on the last night, the little novice tugs her nightdress off and the little princess does the same - these are the clothes it’s easiest to change in and out of on their own - before they swap and put on each other’s nightdresses. The next morning, a bold little princess is led away to rejoin the royal party and a mild little novice joins the other girls at the motherhouse. 

  
  


There are whispers, because of course there are. The girls do not hear them for long years - Rhaella is visiting court for the first time as a woman grown, soon after taking her septa’s vows, when someone asks her, and she only smiles, shaking her head. “My sister and I are as we should be, where we should be, and my name is Rhaella, I swear by the Seven.” 

  
  


After all, she would not be the only septa to take vows under a name not that which was given to her at birth, but under which she has chosen to serve the Seven. Rhaella tells Aerea this on that visit to court, and her sister laughs, linking their arms together. “I think that is cutting things very fine indeed, but I suppose you’re right. Will it count when I make vows as a bride before the gods the same way, do you think?”

  
  


It is a moment between sisters well pleased at their choice made as girls, a moment that almost did not happen. 

  
  


For Aerea remembers that once, a Princess Aerea was King Maegor’s heiress, she remembers that for years she was the heir to her uncle Jaehaerys. And at twelve years old, she hates Dragonstone, she hates her mother, she hates everyone in the castle and the village and all the island. 

  
  


(She agrees with her mother in only one thing - she hates Elissa Farman most of all, but where Queen Rhaena hates the lover who betrayed her as a thief, Aerea hates that her only friend abandoned her.)

  
  


She was to be the bad king’s heir, and that is not a good thing, perhaps, but maybe it means she can ride his dragon? On Balerion the Black Dread, the very Conqueror’s dragon, no one will ever be able to make her stay here in this place she hates. She could go anywhere in the wide world, if she becomes Balerion’s new rider. 

  
  


It is with Balerion in mind that Aerea slips down to where the dragons roost, but before she can make her way to the black giant, another dragon blocks her path. “Not you!” Aerea huffs, and tries to circle around. But this dragon is too large for her to get around. She has no name, Aerea knows, this she-dragon with scales like fire opal, no name but “Meraxes’ daughter”, for she was the last known hatchling of Queen Rhaenys’ dragon, a dragonet that came from her egg only after the deaths of Rhaenys and Meraxes in Dorne.

  
  


Meraxes’ daughter refuses to move, and turns her head so that Aerea stares into one golden eye. “Oh,” the girl whispers, and carefully puts a hand on the dragon’s snout. 

  
  


Balerion is beyond, still, and this dragon is about the same size as Mother’s Dreamfyre, not  _ quite  _ the fierce giant for which Aerea hoped… And yet. She thinks of Rhaella, suddenly, of her sister who is supposed to give up all worldly things but keeps a pendant, a silver disc set with an opal. Aerea has its match, tucked now under her shirt. Rhaella has been allowed to keep that for it was a gift from their father who died at the hands and claws of Maegor and Balerion. 

  
  


Their father gave his daughters opals. And now a dragon whose scales match the little stones stares at Aerea, stares  _ through  _ her, and seems to welcome the touch of her hand.

  
  


When Aerea takes to the sky, it is not astride Balerion but astride Meraxes’ daughter. Still, it hardly matters as she soars over the hated island and the crashing waves of the Narrow Sea, laughing into the wind until she is breathless.

  
  


Even when her dragon turns back for her lair on Dragonstone, when Aerea realizes that she cannot yet command her dragon to go where she wills, still she smiles. Once, after all, she could not steer her horse; all she needs to do is learn, as she did then.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


It is flying that sees Queen Rhaena and Princess Aerea reconciled. 

  
  


Aerea names her dragon Skysong, and takes to the air every day after that. She is fearless and determined, but still a novice on dragonback. There is no one on Dragonstone to teach her but for her mother, and so they are thrown into one another’s company. 

  
  


“I was the first of the Conqueror’s grandchildren to take to dragonback, you know,” Mother says thoughtfully, after they have circled the island together, and Aerea has learned how to coax Skysong into a dive, and then to skim over the water, low enough that Aerea could feel the salt spray on her face, can still taste it on her lips. Aerea looks over from where she’s unchaining her saddle - that was the first lesson, how to handle a dragonsaddle - to see her mother with her eyes far away, looking west to where King’s Landing is. “When I married my brother, Aegon, he was not yet a dragonrider, and so our father forbade me to bring Dreamfyre on our progress. I wish, even now, that he had not. Perhaps if…”

  
  


Rhaena Targaryen shakes her head. “And you care nothing for any of this, of course.”

  
  


Aerea shrugs. “I don’t know anything about it. You’ve always ignored me, you always preferred your favorites.” She says this with more tiredness than anger; she is still too full of the joy of flight to muster much rage. She should not quarrel with her mother now, not when no one else can help her learn.

  
  


Her mother’s face darkens - but then she sighs. “I gave you up. You and your sister, more than once, for your safety first, and then because…” 

  
  


“Because you were happy on Fair Isle and didn’t want a child to worry about,” Aerea challenges her, in spite of all her good intentions. Skysong’s tail lashes, and Aerea puts a hand on her dragon’s side, trying to calm her. “And now you don’t know what to do with me. I hear the servants talk, they all think it, that I’m wild and willful and you don’t know how to mother me.” 

  
  


“Is that what they say?” Rhaena Targaryen murmurs, and her eyes glitter oddly. “Well, they best not say so where I can hear - though they’re not so wrong, are they? The truth is, Aerea, you’re right that I didn’t ask for you, but I wouldn’t have been allowed to take you and I knew that. Until little Daenerys was born, you were my baby brother’s heir. Even if you were only seen as a placeholder, you had to live in King’s Landing, especially when my brother and sister barricaded themselves here on Dragonstone.” 

  
  


“You could have stayed!” 

  
  


“No. No, I could not have. Not after being Maegor’s captive there. You were such a little girl, you barely understood - and we both know, my wild girl, that you were not there for very long under Maegor’s rule.”

  
  


Aerea goes still. Never before has any of her relatives even so much as hinted that they know she wasn’t always Aerea. “You - you noticed -” 

  
  


“Of course I noticed. I’m your mother, and Rhaella’s too.” The matter-of-fact words stop Aerea’s growing temper more quickly than anything else her mother could have ever said. She doesn’t remember her father, she barely remembers Maegor. She understands that her sister hated the Red Keep and her mother does too, but her own experiences there had all been good, and her time hiding as a stablehand on the edge of the city even better. So she understands the  _ fact  _ that Rhaella and Mother both despise the city, but the  _ why  _ is now and ever beyond her.

  
  


But her mother - her absent, distant, seemingly uninterested and uncaring mother - had known that the twins had switched places. Had  _ asked  _ for her when Uncle Jaehaerys gave her Dragonstone, Aunt Alysanne said. It’s not very much, Aerea thinks, but it’s  _ something _ . Flying together is  _ something  _ too. 

  
  


They fly together every day, and they talk too. Aerea wants to know about her great-grandfather the Conqueror, and about her own father, Prince Aegon. Her favorite tale of all is how Mother and Father stole into King’s Landing while Maegor the Usurper was away, to take Grandfather Aenys’ dragon Quicksilver for Father. Aerea tells her mother all about hiding as a stable girl, how much she’d loved the horses and the barn cats, and seeing all the different people coming in and out of the city. 

  
  


They will never be easy together, save when they are at the business of dragon lessons. On Aerea’s thirteenth nameday her mother gives her new riding clothes, warm and sturdy for dragonriding. Aside from that she says very little, her face tight and grim. Aerea wants to yell at her, but she doesn’t. She knows now that when she and her sister were born, her mother begged their father to stop fighting for the throne, to go to the Free Cities. 

  
  


Had he listened, he would have been alive to claim the crown when Maegor died. Uncle Jaehaerys couldn’t have done it, then. Mother would still be Queen properly, Aerea and Rhaella would be real princesses, not just have the empty title - maybe they would be a bigger family. 

  
  


Still, it’s unfair that her  _ nameday  _ reminds her mother of all that, when Aerea remembers Grandmother Alyssa and then Aunt Alysanne always making sure she had a happy day, with her friends about her and special treats. Perhaps she is getting too old for that, but that doesn’t mean Aerea wants to grieve on a day she was told was special. 

  
  


Except - 

  
  


That night, her mother comes to her again, with a smile more melancholy than bright, but it’s a real smile for all that. (One thing Aerea didn’t like at court was all the false smiles, but at least that taught her how to know the difference.) She’s holding a sheathed dagger in her hands, and when she gives it to Aerea, Aerea pulls it free to find Valyrian steel. 

  
  


“This was your father’s,” Mother says, brushing a loose wisp of hair out of Aerea’s eyes. The gesture is stilted, uncertain, but suddenly that isn’t so upsetting. “He left it with me before he went to battle. He wanted to give it to his heir one day, and you are his heir, and mine.” 

  
  


“I’m no one’s heir,” Aerea objects. “Not anymore.” 

  
  


“Not heir to the throne, perhaps. But you are still  _ ours _ , Aerea. You are still blood of the dragon, and that means this belongs to you as much as your dragon does. As much as anything can, if you find the strength to reach out and take it. Now, let me show you how to wear it.” 

  
  


Aerea nods, and lets her mother show her how to fasten the belt and sheath, how to keep the blade a little loose so it can be drawn more quickly. “You’ll leave, I know,” Rhaena says. “You may not like me much, daughter, but you are  _ like me _ . Restless, intemperate. Do not let any lords have you to guest for too long. They all want dragons, my girl, and you are young yet. They will expect to be able to take Skysong from you.” 

  
  


“Who would dare?” Aerea asks. 

  
  


“That, I cannot say. I do know that the Lannisters attempted to see me seduced by the lord’s bastard son when I was a woman grown, twice widowed and thrice wed, and very much wanted me to repay their vaunted past loyalties with dragon eggs. So be careful, when you fly.”

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Before she is fourteen, Aerea and Skysong are ready to leave Dragonstone. She promises her mother it will not be forever, but Mother has her old friend Larissa Velaryon at Dragonstone now, and other new women whose names Aerea hasn’t bothered to learn. But she’s never liked Dragonstone, never made a secret of that, and now that she’s free to go she  _ wants  _ to.

  
  


There are places she wants to see, and no one but another dragonrider can stop her. Mother won’t, her aunt is busy with her own children and her uncle never paid Aerea much mind anyway. And so she is free to see whatever she might like. 

  
  


Aerea and Skysong take to the sky as the sunrise paints the world red and pink and purple, the dawn light shimmering off the dragon’s opal scales and the silver-gilt hair of the girl astride her, hair cropped as short as a boy’s with a lost prince’s Valyrian steel blade. 

  
  


Of course, the first place she goes is to Oldtown. Aerea is not quite fourteen, but she knows that word will get to King’s Landing horribly quick this way, but she doesn’t care. Not when Oldtown, however much she disliked it once, is Rhaella’s home. This is the place her twin loves as much as Aerea loves to fly on Skysong, and so Aerea likes it well enough for her sake. 

  
  


The Mother Superior eyes Aerea in an all-too-familiar way, one Aerea remembers from times of harsh discipline and a morning when she was little yet, standing beside her sister in a nightgown softer than anything she had worn in years. But in the end, to gainsay a dragonriding princess is not such a wise idea, and so the novice Rhaella is called to visit with her sister. 

  
  


“I always knew you would ride a dragon,” Rhaella says with a laugh as Aerea flings her arms around her twin. No one could mistake one for the other now, she thinks, eyeing her sister’s single long plait, her pale blue novice’s robe, even as Rhaella takes in Aerea’s leathers and runs a hand over her shorn hair with a little shake of the head. “You look a veritable warrior maiden in that garb, a knife at your hip.”

  
  


“And you’re glowing like  _ the  _ Maiden - the motherhouse suits you as well as you thought?” 

  
  


“Oh yes - I’ve learned to work in the gardens and the stillroom, they say that a septa should always stand ready to aid a maester in medicinal work, or the lady of the house and her women in making soaps or dyes and whatnot. And when I’m not at that or at my devotional lessons, I can study - so that I might teach one day.” 

  
  


Aerea smiles. “I’m glad. You fit here, and I fit with my dragon.” 

  
  


“I know you didn’t like Dragonstone,” Rhaella says. “I probably would have - well, except for the dragons - if I were in your place.” 

  
  


“Much quieter,” Aerea agrees. “Definitely more to your preferences, sweet sister. I spent my days being horribly bored, till I took to visiting the dragons. And now Skysong is mine.” She doesn’t even regret Balerion now. How can she, when her Skysong takes her as high and far as she could ever wish?

  
  


“And so the gods provide for us,” Rhaella says with a quiet faith Aerea cannot understand. But she’s glad enough for her sister to be at ease and happy, so she nods with a smile.  _ The gods didn’t provide, I went to the dragons and claimed one _ , Aerea thinks, but she doesn’t say as much. Rhaella is a true believer, and she won’t take that from her.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Rhaella is busy with her duties, and while Aerea knows the septas can’t force her to leave, they might loose their frustrations on her gentle twin, so she spends the night in the motherhouse’s guest quarters, and takes her leave in the morning. 

  
  


She knows already that it’s time enough for someone to have sent a raven toward King’s Landing. She expects that there may be a reckoning - the daughter of Aegon the Uncrowned and the Queen in the East, once named heiress of Maegor, with a dragon? After hours spent with her mother and her bitter-edged tales, Aerea certainly expects to be called to account eventually.

  
  


She does not expect to see another dragon rising into the sky before her - her aunt’s beautiful Silverwing, and so of course Aunt Alysanne is astride her dragon, waving Aerea down. Their dragons land together in an empty field, and Aerea slides from Skysong’s back, wary in spite of herself. “Aunt Alysanne, has something happened?” 

  
  


“I believe  _ you  _ have happened, Aerea. Meraxes’ daughter, I see.”

  
  


“Her name is Skysong,” Aerea says firmly. “And I have as much right to her as you do to your Silverwing. I’m as Targaryen as you or Uncle Jaehaerys.”  _ You can’t take her from me _ , is what Aerea means, and she is careful not to point out that, actually, she is more Targaryen than her aunt or uncle, Targaryen on both sides.

  
  


“No one disputes that. But you ought to have sent word first, not just claimed her without seeking permission to do so.”

  
  


“Did you? Did my uncle, or my mother? Will Daenerys have to ask permission?” 

  
  


“Your uncle is king, I am queen, and Daenerys is our firstborn. You are a lesser princess, Aerea, and that means you are subject to us. You are a dragonrider now, yes, and you’re right. We won’t take her from you. But you are too young to be trusted freely with such responsibility, and your mother had no right to allow you near the fully-grown dragons without asking us. We would have encouraged you to bond with a hatchling, who would grow more appropriately.” 

  
  


Tie her to a baby? Oh, Aerea likes the little dragonets, of course she does. They can be fierce, but they also play, like her hounds used to, or the cats in the Red Keep. She loves all of the dragons, who had filled her lonely days on Dragonstone. But how  _ dare  _ her own family, dragonriders from her own age themselves, think she should not have the same joy in flight that they know?

  
  


“Then what will you do?” 

  
  


“Your mother has been told that you are to come back to the Red Keep with me. Your Skysong will take up residence in the Dragonpit, and you’ll be able to see her, and fly her, but not so freely, not until you’re older. You gave Oldtown a terrible scare, Aerea, and that cannot be allowed.” 

  
  


Aerea wants to argue. Wants to leap back onto Skysong and flee from her aunt, fly to the Free Cities and beyond. But Silverwing is bigger than Skysong. And Vermithor is bigger yet. If she runs, how long before her uncle’s dragon catches them? What then? 

  
  


At least she’ll be back in the capital, somewhere she used to love. But Aerea can’t help feeling that this time she’s returning to a cage.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aerea returns to King's Landing, to a life rather different from the one she knew as a little girl.

It turns out that Daenerys now has the rooms Aerea once occupied. She, on the other hand, is given her mother’s childhood rooms, aired out for her use after long years shut up. Truthfully, Aerea likes these better - they’re tower rooms, in the royal wing but on the opposite end from her aunt and cousin’s rooms, or the nursery where baby Aemon lives. From her windows here, she has a view in her bedchamber of Blackwater Bay, and a view in her solar of all the city spread out below. 

  
  


There is a back stair as well, one Aerea thinks she might be able to use to slip out unnoticed, but she’ll have to be careful about that. After all, her intent is to convince her aunt and uncle that she is a woman grown sooner rather than later, so that she will be deemed responsible enough to be a dragon rider with freedom of movement again. 

  
  


Aunt Alysanne tries to interest Aerea in the children, of course. Aemon is just a babe at the breast, and of little interest, though it can be funny to watch him trying to figure out how he might crawl. He’s mastered rolling about on the rug meant for such a purpose, but no more than that. As for Daenerys, she’s a bright, happy little girl who chatters half-comprehensibly at everyone she meets and is eager to have her elder cousin play with her. 

  
  


Aerea looks at her and isn’t sure if she wants to smile or leave the room in a rage. 

  
  


When she was small, a woman with eyes hard like stones and cold hands that pinched had taken her from the guardians she trusted (she can’t remember who they were now, she remembers their faces but not their names) and had used her and her sister to threaten her mother into marriage with a monster. When Aerea and Rhaella were only a couple of years older than Daenerys is now, one of them had been kept hostage by a woman who had seen their uncle tortured to death and one of them had been sent to the Oldtown motherhouse where the septas were harsh and cruel. 

  
  


It isn’t that Aerea wishes such things on her sweet little cousin. How can she, when Daenerys is the only person who smiles at her without a shadow in her eyes? Still it burns, to know that being a princess has meant safety for her cousin where for Aerea and her twin it meant anything but. 

  
  


Is this how her mother felt every time she came to court, to see her little brother and sister crowned, to see them have  _ joy  _ of their crowns while her own had only brought fear and pain?

  
  


The court is different too. Aerea remembers her own foul mood when she’d learned of Daenerys’ birth, learned that she was no longer to be the heir, but she hadn’t really understood what it meant, then. Now, she finds that courtiers’ gazes simply pass over her, and she can go either unnoticed or disdained. She hears whispers as she passes of how ill-raised she has been, that she was simply able to take off for Oldtown. 

  
  


_ “But then, look at her mother, and how wild she became. Encouraged the Farman girl to her defiance, no wonder the chit turned thief.”  _

  
  


_ “She fed her husband to a dragon, that’s vicious no matter how wicked he was, what’s her daughter capable of?”  _

  
  


_ “Good thing the king and queen took their niece in hand. They’ll see her settled neatly, just like her sister. Ought to send her to  _ _ join  _ _ her sister, now there’s the prince and princess, and the queen like to birth many more.” _

  
  


_ “By the Seven, look at that hair! Short and messy as a pig boy’s!” _

  
  


Do they think she can’t hear them, or do they simply not care? There are others too, lords and ladies with sons to marry off, who eye her thoughtfully, boys who think themselves charming but who Aerea finds loutish or simply irritating. And thanks to her mother’s warning, she wagers she knows what they want. Not her, but Skysong. Dragons for their heirs. 

  
  


They see a girl they can move around as a marriage pawn - she is no heiress unless her uncle grants her a holding but she has a dragon, she is of royal blood. And, since Daenerys is surely meant for Aemon and Grandmother Alyssa’s Baratheon children are in their father’s care, Aerea is the only relative of the King and Queen available for marriage. 

  
  


Well, there is Mother, but after the disaster of that horrible little man Androw, it’s unlikely she will wed again.

  
  


Perhaps, Aerea thinks, if they are going to talk about her anyway, if they are going to disapprove, she ought to give them reason. She won’t act out, remembering her goal of escape, but there must be something...

  
  


Aerea has her mother’s old rooms and her mother’s childhood clothing, all of it that might fit brought out of tucked-away chests for her. She isn’t sure what impulse drives her, but sewing is one thing the septas were able to drill into her head. She’d found it useful - if they saw her busy with a needle, they thought she could be planning no mischief, when it was quite the contrary. And so she takes the clothing and she picks it apart, dresses into long tunics split at the sides to show flowing, loose ankle-length trousers made from the cloth of other dresses. 

  
  


They say both of the Conqueror’s queens often wore trousers or leggings, to show they were dragonriders. Visenya almost never wore gowns, and Rhaenys only sometimes. Aerea likes the idea. She is careful to make clothes that cover everything that ought to be covered, her tunics long enough that most of her legs are obscured. They are all made of good cloth, in colors that suit her. 

  
  


No one can object to it, really, for on Dragonstone and here in the Red Keep are books and even paintings that show Targaryen women - and Valyrian women in general, before them - dressed in similar ways. “It is not appropriate for a young lady to dress this way, unless you are riding your dragon, Aerea,” Aunt Alysanne tells her the first time she sees Aerea in such an outfit, a green tunic and black trousers.

  
  


“But I’m not a lady, Aunt. I’m a Targaryen. We have different rules, don’t we?” _ And I want no one to forget that I have a dragon, and know well how to ride her. _

  
  


And what can be said to that, when that is the very basis on which her aunt and uncle are wed, on which Aemon and Daenerys will marry when they are grown? In comparison, what is a little matter like how a  _ lesser princess _ dresses? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


She thinks about it, sometimes. Her first memories are not of a Targaryen castle, even her sister is not the first child with whom Aerea remembers playing. She remembers a big  _ house _ , with a… a garden crisscrossed by cobbled paths, and the smell of the sea. If she closes her eyes, she can see the faces of other children, and of adults who they looked very like. She can remember a sweet voice singing, though she could not say what the words were now. 

  
  


She remembers being told very gently that she is a fosterling, that ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ are not hers. 

  
  


_ “That’s all right, you’re still ours, no matter what,” _ a voice says somewhere in the back of her memory, but all she remembers is a smile with one crooked tooth and bright green eyes, sprays of freckles over a small nose, and even a few on a pair of childish hands. 

  
  


_ “Alinna, come play!” _ Children’s voices, she never remembered them before, but something about the nursery reminded her, and now she can’t quite forget.

  
  


She had been four, she knows, when Tyanna of the Tower had come for her. When she came face to face with a shy little girl who had her face, the two of them clinging together in fear of the cruel woman who had claimed them. _ “She doesn’t look like us, so she’s not our mama,” _ she had whispered to her twin. 

  
  


There’s little point to the memories, the flickering broken pieces of them. She was too young for things to be any clearer, looking back, so Aerea tries not to think about it. She tries not to think about her brown hair getting in her face as she ran about, and the name Alinna. 

  
  


(Linna, she’d said her name was, when her hair had been dyed brown again and cut short for the first time, when she was eight years old and playing a stablehand on the city’s outskirts.)

  
  


The trouble is, it was easy to forget, when she’d last been in King’s Landing. She’d had friends to run about with and make mischief, keeping her more than occupied. At Dragonstone, she’d been too angry, too lonely, too in love with the dragons and daydreaming of escape to brood on anything but how much she hated where she was. 

  
  


King’s Landing is quieter, now. Maybe Aerea herself is quieter now. She thinks of Rhaella and she doesn’t want to be her sister for anything - the fact that she never liked that life is why she’s here, after all - but she might want her sister’s security. Rhaella knows where she belongs, she knows who she is, and Aerea… 

  
  


Aerea wants to fly, but where to? 

  
  


Who was she supposed to be, when she was Alinna, who were the people who fostered her? Do they know, do they remember, will Aerea ever know their names when even her own mother ensured she herself would not know where her daughters went? And why is it that after all this time, she suddenly cares about it?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The library is always quiet. 

  
  


That’s because there are few people who use it. Sometimes servants come to collect books for her uncle’s councilors, the men who are making laws, planning roads, and all the other things that they do. 

  
  


When Aerea can, she sneaks looks at the titles they take away and writes them down, so she can find the books later. They’re very dry and dull, most of them, but she reads them anyway. It might be useful, one day, to know these things. And it keeps her busy, when the lessons the septa sets her are dull and easily completed, when her long days would elsewise leave her to brood on memories best left alone. The books are a challenge, like it was once a challenge to muck stables, or ride properly.

  
  


She heard a courtier say once that if her mother had been more sensible she might have been Queen in truth, and while Aerea is not certain of the ways in which her mother was supposedly  _ not  _ sensible, she thinks it can’t hurt to know things. 

  
  


She doesn’t want to steal her uncle’s throne. But she doesn’t want to be disadvantaged, someone’s tool to use like people tried to make of Mother. Like Elissa Farman  _ did  _ make of Mother, using Mother’s love to get free of her brother, and then stealing from her. And so Aerea reads dull law books and history books that are sometimes dull and sometimes  _ fascinating _ , and finds that she enjoys the map books. It’s almost enough to make her want to go back to Dragonstone, to compare the maps in her uncle’s books to the Painted Table. 

  
  


Aerea doesn’t know if she’s allowed to take the books out of the library, but she starts bringing in charcoal sticks and parchment, trying to learn how to draw the maps. It’s slow, tricky work, but eventually she feels secure enough to draw her maps in ink, which doesn’t smudge like the charcoal. 

  
  


“This is not appropriate for a lady,” Septa Jennet says, when she finds Aerea drawing maps in the library. “You should be practicing your courtesies and your heraldry, your knowledge of family trees. These are the things you need for court, and enough history to appear to advantage. I suppose your sewing is well enough, though  _ not  _ put to proper use.” At that, she scowls at Aerea’s clothing. 

  
  


Aerea smiles a false bright smile and demonstrates that she does indeed know her courtesies, and she recites heraldry and families as the septa quizzes her. “I am a dragonrider, Septa. It’s very fitting for me to study maps, so I’ll always be able to find my way.” 

  
  


“And these other books? You are not the king’s heir anymore, girl.” 

  
  


“No, Septa. But Aunt Alysanne is Uncle’s closest councilor, her and Septon Barth, and he is very learned. I might be able to do the same for a husband someday. Even if he is only a lord, I can help him by learning these things.” Aerea thinks she doesn’t want any husband, not for a long time anyway, but already she senses it would be unwise to say so and playing the dutiful noble girl gives her an excuse for her studies. She is fourteen, near fifteen now, and she has her monthlies - there are those who would say she is already ready to wed. But there is no word of such things, and whatever the reason, she is relieved. 

  
  


Sometimes Aerea sees Septon Barth, researching something or other for the King and council. He never speaks to her but sometimes she thinks he’s watching her. Perhaps trying to figure out why she’s here. As long as he doesn’t question her, or get her in trouble, Aerea doesn’t really care if he watches her.

  
  


Let him look. At least he is more polite about it than the courtiers who stare and whisper behind their hands. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The library can only offer so much distraction, of course. Aerea has standing permission to go to the Dragonpit - she thinks the reasoning is that the Dragonkeepers will prevent her from taking off with Skysong. Which Aerea is fairly certain they can’t manage to do, but what they can do is ensure her aunt or uncle is on her trail far too quickly for any escape to be effective, and that amounts to the same thing. 

  
  


The Keepers get used to her presence after the first few visits. At first, Aerea does as her mother would do, faced with the insult of only being allowed to visit her dragon and not ride her. She ignores the presence of the men completely, spending all of her time focused on Skysong. (Part of this is safety; the other dragons might object to the human in their midst if she did not so clearly belong to one of them. In the Dragonpit, Aerea rather feels that she is more Skysong’s human than Skysong is  _ her  _ dragon.) 

  
  


But Aerea is not her mother. And she is every bit as lonely in King’s Landing, this time, as ever she was at Dragonstone. There is some comfort in the fact that this time it is partly of her own making; her awareness of the disdain of some courtiers and the plotting eyes of others keeps her from more than the most distant courtesies. Perhaps her aunt will decide to make Aerea part of her household, but as of yet she has not. 

  
  


In King’s Landing before, there had been servants’ children to befriend as well as noble girls of her own age, and they had together made up the pack she ran about with. The servant children had joined in when they could get free of chores. Now, the noble girls are gone and the servant children she befriended then are half-grown as she is, more aware of the differences in rank and what that truly means. And so instead she begins to talk to the Dragonkeepers, when she settles on the upper walkway they patrol. 

  
  


Most of them are from Dragonstone themselves, Aerea learns, men who grew up the sons of villagers or castle staff. Others are the sons of castle guardsmen or servants at the Red Keep. They have grown up near enough to dragons to not panic at the sight of them. 

  
  


“They’ve their moods, Princess, like all animals do,” Captain Garyth comments one day, leaning on the rail beside her. “Dragons are wondrous, it’s true, but they’re still animals at the end of the day. Some are calmer or sweeter than others, some too wild to ever come to hand, those that can be claimed again and again, and those meant only for one rider, ever. Those of us from the dragons’ island, we know it. Some of us are born to know it, the rest learn it.” 

  
  


Aerea would ask what he means by some of them being born to it, but she doesn’t need to when Garyth looks at her with eyes as violet as her own. Dragonseeds - the bastard children of Targaryens - and their descendants are not an uncommon sight on Dragonstone, after all. Her mother’s chief maidservant at Dragonstone, Mella, is as Valyrian in her look as the queen she serves. Others in the castle and village have the same silver-gilt hair or violet eyes, or the less obvious blonde hair and blue eyes of Targaryens like Aunt Alysanne. 

  
  


“What if one of you tried to take a dragon one day? Enough of you have some of our blood, after all,” Aerea says one day to the oldest of the guards. If Merik has a Valyrian ancestor, it’s years gone by; his hair is grey-streaked black and his eyes are dark as dragonglass.

  
  


“One of t’others would call the king or queen, ‘n they’d be on ‘im before he got far. Maybe they’d send you, if you was old enough that day, Princess. Besides, only the Targaryens can ride, y’hear?” 

  
  


Aerea doesn’t ask a guard about that again, not Merik or Garyth, not Aron who loves to talk of his sons and daughters till he’s all out of breath. Not any of them. They talk of other things, and she persuades Lucien who is slender and quick, only a little taller than Aerea herself with white-blonde hair and Targaryen eyes, to teach her the basics of swordplay. Lucien teaches her and she practices with Brynden, who is only an apprentice guard and exactly her age, and blushes every time she smiles at him.

  
  


(Sometimes Brynden’s blushes make her ears burn red, though, and the other guards on duty grin and chuckle.  _ Their  _ laughter is much fonder than the courtiers’ and doesn’t bother her.)

  
  


She asks no one, but she wonders. There were other Valyrians who rode dragons. They are all dead, but is it that only those families could ride, or that those who  _ could  _ ride didn’t let others have the chance? There is a good bit of Targaryen blood in House Velaryon, and House Baratheon is descended of a dragonseed. Could some of them ride, given the chance? 

  
  


If the answer is yes, Aerea thinks it best if she is not the one to bring up the point.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Septa Jennet is reassigned to little Daenerys in Aerea’s fifteenth year, releasing her from formal lessons. So she spends ever more time in the library or at the Dragonpit. She goes back to the stables too after Uncle Jaehaerys gives her a lovely cream-colored mare on her fifteenth name day, and the stable boys and hostlers who work there learn that Princess Aerea insists upon caring for her own horse. 

  
  


Skysong is her true mount, of course, but riding Starling at speed outside the city walls is almost as good as flying. On days like that, Aerea takes cheese and bread and apples, and stays out all the day. Drawing maps has turned to drawing other things, and she can always find something worth trying to sketch. Her aunt and uncle send guards with her then, who do not leave her as they do at the Dragonpit, but they usually let her have her space and relax themselves a small distance away. Even when she finds a long stick and uses it to do the drills Lucien showed her, they don’t object. Sometimes one or two of them even call out a suggestion to her. 

  
  


“Going to be another Scarlet Snake, Princess?” Arram asks her one day. She usually has Arram among the guards sent with her; he is fond of her in a careless sort of way, Aerea thinks. 

  
  


“I doubt I’d be allowed that, but if I’m going to wander on Skysong one day, I’d best know how to defend myself on the ground too, shouldn’t I?” 

  
  


That’s when her guards take to showing her tricks they know too when they’re out in the fields, tricks like the best places to kick a man or dig in one’s fingers to make someone let go of you. Or how to use a knife concealed about one’s person. Those lessons come mostly from Tybar, who learned them as a boy in Lannisport. Aerea chooses not to ask what profession Tybar used to have, that he is so good with knives and can move silently when he wishes. 

  
  


He tells her once that if she ever wants to learn to pick locks, he’s her man, but Aerea decides not to take him up on that. She does accept the sixteenth name day gift of several flat knives she can hide under her clothing, however.

  
  


No one questions Aerea’s given reason for wanting to learn these things. The women of House Targaryen are not fighters now, and even in her day Visenya was a rarity - the women of the family are warriors astride their dragons and only then, if at all. But Aerea knows the story of her mother’s time at Casterly Rock and the other western houses, the bastard, second sons and cousins who at each successive seat tried to woo her mother in spite of her marriage. 

  
  


Because on the ground she was only a woman, and they thought her as weak as they think all women are. They should spend a year or two under the command of Oldtown septas, they wouldn’t think that anymore. But the point is that they thought her mother, a queen twice over by rights, was defenseless.

  
  


Aerea will not be defenseless whether she is astride Skysong or with both feet planted firmly on the ground. 

  
  


Despite her growing friendships with her guardsmen, it’s fortunate that when she visits the Dragonpit, they leave her at the door - it is the Dragonkeepers’ duty to send a few of their own back to the Red Keep with her. While the Keepers would tell if she tried to flee on Skysong’s back, they don’t tell when Aerea goes into a storage room and comes out dressed in the simple gown of a citywoman, her silver-gilt hair tucked under an auburn wig (and, in time, Tybar’s knives tucked securely under her clothes). 

  
  


Brynden helps ‘Alinna’ braid her auburn hair back out of her face - he has four sisters and they made sure he knew how to do it - and then they go out into the city together, just a youth and a girl wandering the marketplaces. If Brynden’s lass has purple eyes, well, everyone assumes she’s the daughter of another Keeper.

  
  


It’s from Brynden’s sisters that Aerea learns how to spin and weave. Highborn ladies are only taught embroidery, and in some parts of the south lace-making. Weaving is considered a craft for the wives of smallfolk - except in the North, Aerea’s heard. But she enjoys being able to spin her own thread. For one thing, once she masters it, she can mix the fibers to get multicolored threads, which have a pleasing look in both her weaving projects and her embroidery. 

  
  


When she acquires a loom and several drop spindles, no one spends time enough in her rooms to notice but her maid. The things she works on in her room, usually during bad weather or at night when she can’t sleep, are hers. And no one seems to care that her new clothes aren’t always made of reused cloth, that her new cloak and blankets came from nowhere, and that her embroideries on clothing and the few small hangings she has made to brighten her walls are often strangely colored.

  
  


What surprises her most is the odd thrill of seeing things she helped to make go on the shelves in Brynden’s parents’ shop. 

  
  


And as for Brynden himself… 

  
  


The singers at court like to go on and on about romantic tales. Kissing Brynden is nothing like that. His hands are rough but his lips are soft, and both are warm. She likes to kiss him, and likes it even more when he teaches her to dance as the smallfolk do, quick-footed with clapping hands, so unlike the proper court dances. 

  
  


She does not love him, though. And she doesn’t think he loves her - they are friends who like to laugh, and dance, and kiss. And that is quite enough, in Aerea’s mind. “People are more alive down here,” she tells him when they collapse, breathless, after dancing together in one of the fountain squares. It’s a festival day, one for fertility, and so in all the city squares today people are dancing. “At court there will be a feast, and dancing, but it isn’t like this.” 

  
  


The sweet fried dough and spiced ale sold at stands for the merchants and artisans of the city tastes better, to Aerea’s mind, than all the dainties and expensive wines she might have her pick of tonight. 

  
  


“You could run away proper,” Brynden says. “I’d say you could marry me, Alinna, but you wouldn’t, and I’m not suited to it. Coram should marry, and he will, he’s the elder and he’ll have the shop one day, but you scare him.” 

  
  


“Poor thing,” Aerea laughs, draining the last of her ale. “I can’t, you know. Starling would pine, and I should die if I could never see Skysong again. But I will never be a lady such as they want of me either.”

  
  


“They say the queen goes about with all manner of women, she listens to them all. Mayhaps you’re a bit like her?” 

  
  


Aerea considers this, leaning half against Brynden’s side and watching little girls link hands in a ring dance. A few little boys dare to join in, too, some of them blushing as red as she and Brynden used to do. Aerea thinks of Daenerys and Aemon, of little Baelon even. They would like to try that, she’ll have to show them, and claim she saw servants’ children or farmers’ children at it.

  
  


Like her aunt, though… “No. She respects everyone, and wants the best for high and low alike. But I don’t think I could see her here, drinking spiced ale and dancing for the Mother’s blessing on womb and crop and harbor’s catch. My mother might, even in all her pride, just to say she had done it. At least I think so.” After all, had Mother not adored Lady Elissa for her wildness, her daring? But her aunt? She cannot see it. 

  
  


“Well, never mind then. Go again?” Brynden asks, and takes her hand. Aerea laughs and lets him pull her back among the dancers, spinning in the sunlight until they cannot bear it any longer. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Aerea does teach her little cousins the ring dance even as Septa Jennet watches with narrowed eyes. _ Where did you learn that, you little imp? _ Aerea can hear the old biddy thinking, the same thing she’d said aloud when she’d caught Aerea dancing a proper jig one morning in her room simply because she could. So she smiles, teasing and sly, in the face of suspicion, and spins about for her cousins, twirling silk scarves in her hands. It makes Aemon and Baelon clap their hands and Daenerys try to mimic her. 

  
  


Sometimes, still, it burns to see her little cousins, safe and indulged as they are, protected by their titles as Aerea’s has never protected her. Sometimes, she dreams of freckled hands and green eyes, the laughter of children and a high-ceilinged nursery in a place she may never be able to name. But being called  _ Alinna  _ when she is out and about in the city has eased it, somehow. Her dragon and her horse, her weaving and her blades, Brynden’s kisses, the Dragonkeepers and guardsmen who treat her better than any courtier in their own gruff ways, all of these things have done her good. 

  
  


Now, Aerea thinks that the best revenge for Tyanna of the Tower’s cold eyes and pinching hands is to deny her memory the power to turn Aerea bitter toward the new royal children. To instead help see to it, with what little power she has, that Daenerys, Aemon, and Baelon  _ stay  _ safe, happy children as long as they might. 

  
  


One day, Aerea is telling them one of the stories Aron said his children love to hear, about little creatures who clean houses by night and ask only for treats left in return. “You can never thank them outright, though, for they take that very ill,” she is saying as the door opens.

  
  


“Mama, Mama!” Chirping at their mother like little birds, the children scramble to their feet and race to Aunt Alysanne, tugging at her hands, her skirts even as she kneels to hug them all at once. 

  
  


“Such wildness! As if I did not see you just this morning!” Aunt Alysanne teases, kissing the top of Aemon’s head and brushing Daenerys’ hair out of her eyes, tucking Baelon in against her side. Aerea, for her part, rises to her feet and then bows deeply, as befits a young woman in tunic and trousers. 

  
  


“Aerea, stop that, we are informal in the nursery,” Aunt Alysanne says, and Aerea straightens gratefully.

  
  


It is odd, to visit with her cousins while their mother looks on, but Daenerys insists she should show off the pretty dance she did with the scarves, and Baelon wants to hear the end of the tale she’d been telling. Aerea can’t help but oblige them, can’t help joining in a ring dance with them - and is startled beyond measure when her aunt joins in herself. 

  
  


How odd, to feel both warmed and measured by her aunt’s bright blue eyes. 

  
  


They leave together, and Aerea is taller than her aunt now, which has been true for years but only seems noticeable now. “I’m glad to see you spend time with them,” Aunt Alysanne says. “It is good for them and for you, Aerea. A safer use of your time than your wanderings in the city, even with the lessons the guards give you.” 

  
  


“I - what?” Her instinct is to lie, despite her shock being so obvious, but something in the tilt of her aunt’s head tells Aerea it is best not to do so. “How… how do you know about that, Your Grace?” 

  
  


“ _ Aunt _ ,” Aunt Alysanne corrects firmly. “I have my ways, as does Septon Barth. Your uncle has no idea, and I mean to keep it that way. I would prefer that you stopped, though I cannot deny it has been good for you. You are much happier, in recent months. Still, while you were watched all the time by trusted eyes, it is a risk, Aerea.” 

  
  


“Everyone I meet thinks I’m some Keeper’s get, that’s all,” Aerea tries to protest. “And I’m not defenseless.”

  
  


“Will your wig fit forever? Have you ever tried your skills against someone who truly means you harm? You need something to do, I understand. I’m going to make you one of my ladies, as in truth I should have done as soon as the septa declared her duty to you completed. But I didn’t think you wished it, and I do try not to take truly unwilling ladies into my service.”

  
  


Aerea turns this idea over in her mind, and then says, half curious and half challenging, “What if I am still unwilling?” She expects arrogance or anger, or the calm, almost dismissive tone her aunt had shown when she cornered Aerea and Skysong. Instead, what she gets are blue eyes alight with mischief, and a pleased little smile. 

  
  


“I am going north on progress. The king will join me later - he has obligations with Myr and Pentos that must be completed first. I’m taking Silverwing, of course, and I want you beside me on your Skysong. This is your chance to take your place as a dragonrider again. I should think you would be quite willing to do that, niece.” 

  
  


Aerea has to admit, her aunt knows exactly what to offer when she puts her mind to such things.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aerea visits Dragonstone, and then joins the progress North.

There are preparations to be made yet before the royal party can go north - Aerea and her aunt will be going by dragon, of course, but the courtiers and servants who will be going must travel by ship. They have already left but no word confirming their arrival at White Harbor has come, so Aerea and her aunt must wait. 

  
  


Which means that Aerea is given leave to go back to Dragonstone and visit her mother. 

  
  


The flight to Dragonstone is short, a matter of an hour or so. Aerea lands Skysong in the same courtyard where they took off over two years ago now, on the way to Oldtown to see Rhaella. The island is not so dreary as Aerea remembers it - perhaps that is because it is a bright sunny day or perhaps it’s because she is no longer trapped here and so looks at Dragonstone with different eyes. 

  
  


Skysong settles to sleep - she is like a cat, Aerea swears it. For all that her dragon is young and fierce in the air, when she is on the ground at the height of afternoon, she likes nothing better than to nap in the sun. Aerea shoulders the bag she has brought with her and heads inside, strangely glad not to have been formally received. There will be enough of that in her future soon enough, after all. 

  
  


Her mother is not alone, when the steward shows Aerea into her solar. Cousin Larissa went home some time ago, Aerea knows, and there had been little word of any companions her mother had taken since. Except for one - it was said that the Dowager Queen Elinor Costayne had come to visit her fellow survivor of Maegor six months back. Supposedly Queen Elinor was planning to give herself to the Faith, but wished a final visit with Rhaena Targaryen first. 

  
  


Aerea can dimly remember her mother’s sister-wives. Tyanna she wishes very much that she could forget, while Queen Jeyne is a tall, dark-haired shadow in Aerea’s memory and nothing more. But Aerea does remember four little boys with whom she and Rhaella had played the day of the wedding, all of them dumped in an antechamber to amuse themselves after the ceremony. One had Queen Jeyne’s dark curls and so far as Aerea knows, is back at Tarbeck Hall as its lord. 

  
  


Of the other three, one had been blond, one redheaded, and one only a bald baby watched over by the maidservant left with them, but all three possessed of curiously light brown eyes, like honey. The redheaded woman at her mother’s side shares those eyes, and though Aerea could not have recalled her face without a reminder, when she sees her she recognizes her. And she does remember that voice. It had been Queen Elinor who’d told a little girl then called Rhaella that Oldtown was a beautiful city, she would like it, and her hands had been gentle as she smoothed that little girl’s hair back out of her eyes. 

  
  


It  _ was  _ beautiful, Aerea will grant that, and she cannot blame her… stepmother? for not knowing what training as a novice would be like for someone not suited to it. 

  
  


“So you’re to go north with little Aly,” her mother says when they are all seated with goblets of wine. “You look… well, daughter.” 

  
  


Aerea toys with her goblet, trying to think what it is about her mother and Elinor that seems so… familiar. “I feel well, Mother. Aunt Alysanne says she wrote you about my, er… exploits, she called them? It suited me almost as well as being free to wander with Skysong would have.” 

  
  


To Aerea’s own surprise, her mother  _ laughs _ . Queen Rhaena had smiled often enough, with Elissa Farman or Sam Stokeworth or Alayne Royce, but she had very rarely laughed. Yet now she does, her eyes bright with her amusement, and Aerea is puzzled by how warm it makes her feel. “You do remind me of Aegon sometimes. He used to sneak out of the Red Keep to go visit his horse in the stables, and he had a friend among the kitchen boys who would take him into the city. Father never knew, Mother did and I think she was planning to put a stop to it, but then our wedding set off the madness and that ended it on its own. Your aunt is right, though - it wasn’t safe for Aegon and it isn’t safe for you. I wandered often enough, but then my father was not a man to deny a fellow dragonrider, not like my brother. If you had Skysong I wouldn’t object, but…”

  
  


“Well, I’ll be as safe as Aunt Alysanne now, and I’ll have Skysong too,” Aerea says, trying to ignore the funny twist in her chest at being told she’s like the father she never knew. “Just cold, for the next little while.” 

  
  


“When I visited my son at the Eyrie, the ship I took from Gulltown to return south was captained by a man from White Harbor,” Queen Elinor says. “He spoke often of his beloved white city, and his old gods. Many in White Harbor follow their lords in the Faith, but not all. He made me want to see it, so I think I envy you a little, Princess.” 

  
  


“Aerea,” Aerea corrects impulsively. “We are something like family, aren’t we?”

  
  


Her mother and Queen Elinor exchange a very odd look before Elinor smiles at her. “Aerea, then. Yes, I rather think that we are.”

  
  


Aerea watches them together as she sips her wine, and she has to wonder just what it is now between the last queens of Maegor the tyrant. She knows the rumors about her mother and her former companions, knows it was true at least as regards Elissa, for she saw them kissing once. She doesn’t know if the other women were her mother’s lovers too or not. She knows also the rumors that all the Black Brides were taken in one bed. She knows quite a lot of rumors and even some secrets, for it seems that when the court decided she was no longer of any account, they somehow assumed her ears had ceased to work. 

  
  


Mother looks happier again though, regardless. Aerea finds she’s glad of it. Perhaps she is not the only one who is learning not to give the ghosts the bitterness they must want.

  
  


She stays with them for two days, and walking the halls at night, she glances into the room with the Painted Table, half thinking she will now have a chance to compare it to her maps. What she sees instead, outlined in moonlight, are her mother and Queen Elinor. They aren’t kissing, like when she saw Mother and Elissa, but they are wrapped around each other, the smaller Elinor leaning back against Mother’s chest, Mother’s chin on her shoulder as they look out at the dark waves below.

  
  


They look like Aunt Alysanne and Uncle Jaehaerys, so very at ease together. The septons would call this a sin, but if Targaryens are exempt from the rules about incest, then surely Targaryens and their chosen lovers are also free of any other declarations on whom one can and cannot love?

  
  


Aerea smiles faintly and tiptoes away before they see her. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


From the air, White Harbor is all the white of its name, save for the roofs of the houses. They are slate grey, and the contrast makes Aerea think of snowstorms, white snow and grey sky. She has seen one winter - and she was born in one, though she cannot remember that - and though it was a fairly mild one there had been a few storms. On this bright autumn day, though, White Harbor smells like the sea, not the frosty, barely-there scent of snow in the air. 

  
  


Aerea has to admit it’s preferable to the capital, that way. She may have loved her days spent in the bustle of King’s Landing, but no one can deny it’s not the cleanest of cities and that its smell reflects that. It’s still new, still growing, after all. 

  
  


White Harbor is newer than Oldtown, but it’s a city grown into itself and settled, a city that smells of the sea it sits beside. Aerea likes it already, and she can’t help wondering if she’ll be able to slip off and explore it as a normal girl might. A glance to the left where Aunt Alysanne is astride Silverwing, and she thinks no, not this time. Her aunt will be watching, she’s sure of that much. 

  
  


And it occurs to Aerea, as they fly low enough to see the people in the streets, that she probably wouldn’t have been able to stay unnoticed if she did succeed in getting out. It looks like the entire city and probably some people from villages in the surrounding countryside have turned out to see them. They’re on their roofs, hanging from windows, filling the streets. She’s never seen the like, and she wonders if her aunt and uncle are greeted like this everywhere they go. 

  
  


She asks, when they land in the largest of the New Castle’s courtyards. “Do they always come out like that for you?” she murmurs in the brief moment they have before the song and dance of formal greetings begins.

  
  


“That was a bit intense even for us, actually. There is less nervousness here, I think, and more curiosity,” Aunt Alysanne replies in an undertone, before striding forward to meet Lord Theomore Manderly. Aerea follows, careful not to walk too quickly - she’s taller, with longer legs, and it’s easy to outpace her aunt if she doesn’t pay attention. That happened at court a few times, and her royal uncle’s disapproval is a vivid memory, though Aunt Alysanne herself had laughed and complained about being the only one not to inherit any height in their family. 

  
  


Less nervousness and more curiosity. Yes, Aerea thinks, watching those surrounding them rather than the official fuss of a lord greeting his queen. That does seem to describe it well. In much of the south, the Field of Fire may be passing out of living memory but the havoc Maegor wreaked on Balerion is still vivid in the minds of many. The North has never faced dragonfire, because King Torrhen Stark did what any true king ought to do, and put his people before his pride, before his crown. 

  
  


Aerea considers Lord Manderly and wonders about Lord Stark, grandson of a man who gave up his crown for the sake of his people. Is the North so different, so much more closely bound or more loyal? Lord Manderly, to her eyes, seems to only be different from other high lords in that his clothes are thicker. But then they’ve only been here a few minutes. 

  
  


It isn’t different, not really. The food is not quite so fancy, the fires are built a little higher against the chill in the air, but really, White Harbor at least is not so very different than the south. They get a guided, proper tour of the city and Aerea chafes on her borrowed horse, missing her Starling. She twists her fingers in the reins and tries not to long for a chance to wander freely, hair tucked under a wig so no one recognizes her. 

  
  


But purple eyes would not go ignored, here, where dragonseeds aren’t common. So Aerea twines leather around her fingers and takes a deep breath of air that smells of fish and sea salt and coming frost, and does her best to behave. 

  
  


Behaving does not mean flirting back with Lord Manderly’s sons and nephews, who eye her dragon and eye her body as if they are things to claim. She is polite and courteous, she smiles sweetly with her eyes hard as dragonglass, and she digs her thumbnail between the bones of Ser Joren Manderly’s wrist when his other hand drifts too far down her back in the middle of a dance.

  
  


“Perhaps you need a dance tutor to remind you where your hands should go, ser,” she says, looking up through her lashes in a demure way Septa Jennet would find  _ entirely  _ acceptable.

  
  


What Aerea remembers most, after all is said and done, long years later when her memory of it matters far more than expected, is the women’s court her Aunt Alysanne holds in White Harbor. She sits at her aunt’s side as she listens to women of all ages and ranks talk of their lives, their problems. Some of the older women even dare to offer advice to the queen near in age to their own daughters. 

  
  


Aerea expects her aunt to brush it off, like her own mother probably would, but Aunt Alysanne smiles and listens, comforts women who show their tears and thanks others for their stories or their advice. And when a group of little girls shyly offer to show their queen the clapping game they play, Aerea thinks of Brynden saying that maybe she’s like her aunt. 

  
  


Perhaps he was right after all. What a strange thought.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


To her own surprise, Aerea loves Winterfell at first sight. Perhaps it’s that Lord Alaric is refreshing in his bluntness - he’ll treat the royals visiting him with basic decency, but he won’t pretend to like the visit. Perhaps it’s the…  _ solidity  _ of the place. Dragonstone is ancient, but it is the last outpost of Valyria - even the Velaryons’ castle Driftmark, which she’s only seen from the outside one day when Lady Elissa took her sailing, is built to blend in with the other castles of Westeros, as is the Red Keep. Dragonstone is sturdy but it is different. 

  
  


Winterfell looks like what it is, a safe haven in a landscape that’s harsh even in autumn and must be a nightmare in winter. It belongs, in a way Dragonstone’s bit of Valyria never fully can on Westerosi land, and it’s safe in a way the Red Keep will never be. She looks at it and  _ wants it _ \- well, no, not Winterfell exactly because it’s  _ cold  _ up here, but she wants a place like it. A place that is safe, and strong against whatever it might face, a place that belongs where it stands.

  
  


The godswood is beautiful, silent and powerful in a way Aerea has never felt inside a sept. It’s the power of the storms that batter Dragonstone, waves crashing on a cliff, the wind in Aerea’s hair and the beat of Skysong’s wings when they go flying. The gods make more sense found in the power of the world, than in songs and incense and statues. 

  
  


Or perhaps she’s just still bitter about Oldtown. Who can say? 

  
  


She thinks her aunt likes Winterfell too. Aerea wants to talk to Aunt Alysanne, wants to ask her about the women’s court, about her days spent in Winterfell’s small library or out hunting, wants to ask if she really does like brusque Lord Alaric. Aerea thinks so, and she smiles to see even this cold Northman thaw a bit in the face of her aunt’s genuine charm. But she doesn’t know how to ask. 

  
  


They aren’t family, in that sort of way. Aerea could ask any of her Dragonkeepers or her guardsmen, she could ask any question she fancied. But to talk to her aunt? That is somehow beyond her. And so Aerea finds herself in the godswood again after one such hunting trip, oddly soothed by its quiet.

  
  


“You seem very fond of our godswood for a southerner, Your Highness. I keep seeing you come here, I thought your septons teach it’s a place of devils.” 

  
  


Aerea looks up in surprise. She recognizes the newcomer immediately - a girl of her own age with the long Stark face and dark hair, the same raincloud-grey eyes as Lord Alaric and his daughter Alarra, though the Stark sons’ eyes are as dark as their hair. But unlike Lord Alaric’s children, they weren’t introduced to this girl. “Well, I never cared for the sept much, and there’s more devils at court than anywhere else in Westeros.” she says with a shrug. “Perhaps I was meant for a godswood, who can say? You’re the late Lord Walton’s daughter, aren’t you?” 

  
  


She hasn’t been able to catch the other girl’s name, but she did hear whispers about who she was. Lord Walton’s bastard daughter, the only child of his body left after he was killed in the black brothers’ rebellion. 

  
  


“His bastard, you mean. You’re not going to scold me on lack of proper ceremony?” 

  
  


“Gods no. Please, don’t even try, come sit with me instead if you want. I’d much rather you keep talking to me like a person, though I think if you’re going to do that, I should know your name.” 

  
  


“Lyrana Snow,” she says, and she sits on another rock by the pool, her dark braid falling over one shoulder. “Your aunt has quite charmed my uncle, you know. I didn’t think anyone could do such a thing. Not since Lady Stark died, anyway.” 

  
  


“Were they a happy couple then?”

  
  


“Oh yes. Things have been even grimmer since we lost her. Alarra is too shy to step up as Lady of Winterfell. I am not shy, but my last name is Snow, which means there’s only so much I can do.”

  
  


“If it makes you feel any better, I’m no bastard but I get put to just as little use, an inconvenient reminder that my uncle was never meant for the crown.” She shouldn’t have said that, really. She  _ knows better _ , but Lyrana Snow is the first person since Aerea left with her aunt to come north to talk to her like a person, and not a person-shaped object called a princess. She is homesick for her Keepers and her guards, for Brynden and the bustle of his family shop, the chaos of King’s Landing streets. 

  
  


She’s homesick for _Alinna_ , really.

  
  


But here in this castle that is so foreign to her but so right for its place that Aerea can’t help but feel safe within it, a girl with a bastard name who should not even dare speak to her has been watching her visit a sacred space, was curious enough to ask her why. 

  
  


“At least they can marry you off. If I was a boy I could go to the Wall, or serve as a city guardsman in White Harbor. Maybe even squire for one of Lord Manderly’s household knights, who knows? But I’m a girl, so I don’t get to do those things,” Lyrana says. 

  
  


“I didn’t mean that my lot was as difficult as yours, just… differently inconvenient to all concerned? But still inconvenient, and it isn’t - a comfortable thing, to be the pebble in the boot, whatever kind of stone it is.” She sounds like a fool, and she doesn’t know why she’s talking like this, like someone in some of the tales she’s read on nights when she cannot sleep. It’s only - she didn’t want to offend Lyrana, she only wanted to try and sympathize.

  
  


“No, I guess it isn’t,” Lyrana Snow agrees. 

  
  


It’s never been hard, Aerea thinks suddenly, to make friends with people. The Keepers and guards got over their formalities quick enough, and all Alinna ever had to do was show a willingness to work or play, depending on the moment. She doesn’t know if that will work here. And she very much wants it to, she realizes in a rush. 

  
  


After all, how long has it been since anyone who knew who she really was said their first words to her seeing a person, and not a princess? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat over at my tumblr, http://eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com!


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